Islam is generally considered an iconoclastic religion in which the representation of living things has been prohibited from its very beginning. However, the Qurʾān nowhere deals with this problem or explicitly speaks against representation. Rather, the prohibition of pictorial activities was derived from certain ḥadīth, the traditions attributed to the prophet Muḥammad and his followers. It has often been argued that the development of figural painting in Iran was due to Iran's Shīʿī persuasion, which would have taken these ḥadīth less seriously, but this idea likewise is not in keeping with historical fact, because the Shīʿīs follow the tradition as strictly as the Sunnīs, and furthermore, Shiism was declared Iran's state religion only in 1501.

Islam's attitude toward representation is basically in tune with the stark monotheistic doctrine that there is no creator but God: To produce a likeness of anything...